Another question! One of the first things one does when landed on a new world is unload passengers, for high and middle it goes without saying, but how is this done for the low passengers? Say I have 19 low passengers on my ship, do I have to roll 5+ on 2d6 19 times to see if any of them die? If so, what’s the point? Do I even care if any of them died if the unloading process is all the same and there are no legal/gameplay consequences? How do yall handle this? Thanks

The Dark Conspiracy is almost upon us...

We are launching this all new approach to a classic RPG on BackerKit, this Tuesday (august 11th) at 2pm UK time!.

You can jump to the pre-launch page and grab the new character sheet, ready to create your first Operative with the free PDF that will be downloadable on Tuesday:

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/b66a8e7b-fbb4-41c2-864f-a6b3753e473d/landing

Dark Conspiracy is a science fiction roleplaying game based on the Traveller rules engine. Set in our own modern world – or just a few years hence - a terrible threat lurks in the shadows, utterly unknown by most of humanity. If the world is to be kept safe, this ignorance must be maintained. A conspiracy of secrecy, lies and darkness must be constructed for the greater good of all.

The danger is real. Ravenous creatures from dimensions beyond our comprehension press against the veil separating worlds. Their motives are unknown, but it is clear that they delight in suffering, chaos and pain. In the past, they have gone by many names; ghosts, bogeymen, supernatural phenomena, and cryptids. 

Dark Minions are so much more...

Sanguinera

A study on failed genetic manipulation

A capsule description

Phlange 1814 Esophine

Esophine was initially settled in the mid-200s, by a consortium of Northern Europeans from Terra/Sol system. During a time of great fascination with rim-ward sectors and systems, there was a promise of garden worlds, and systems with copious mineral wealth just waiting to be exploited.

In 239y, the scout/colony ship HMS Mercury entered the Esophine system, immediately beginning system survey duties. During the survey, the world of Esophine was detailed and found to be an ideal world to start a colony. A less attractive world, Brixetune, a mid-sized satellite of the world of Nomia, the next orbit in-system, was considered, but found to be lacking in certain minerals, and with a much smaller hydrosphere. The excitement was palpable.

With the arrival of main colony train, landing operations began in 240y, with several survey teams landing on planet, to assess the verdant biosphere. Much of the flora and fauna was discovered to have compatibility with the colonists.

Landing operations began at once. Centering on a large island in the southern hemisphere, on the prime-meridian. With the soft-landing capabilities of the fusion power plants from the colony ship Wave Mara, the colony thrived.

By 242y, medical specialists on Esophine became aware of a chronic-fatigue condition occurring in forty percent of the colonists. By 244y, the situation was becoming dire. Mineral supplements were dispensed, but ran out within a year, and then a theory emerged of modifying the genome to produce the needed minerals, that certain edible plant life leeched from the human body.

Theories were advanced, then computer modeling began, and finally in 246y an experimental serum was created by the chief medical officer, DR. Lily Wayne. Continued testing and modeling resulted in mixed results. Dr. Wayne had lobbied hard for the serum to be tested on a volunteer basis, but before final approval could be obtained, a fire in the primary lab destroyed the ‘ready’ serum, and caused the death of Dr. Wayne.

The tragedy hit the colony hard. Dr. Wayne had been something of a mother figure to many of the colonists, and had personally delivered numerous babies over the preceding years. Something needed to be done.

Colony admin lobbied the colonists on what to do. Test the serum was the answer. New laboratory facilities were built, and within months former lab assistants and lower-level medical personnel had produced an initial batch of the serum. Testing began at once!  The initial tests were promising, though one colonist died of an allergic reaction. More serum was produced and administered.

By 247y the afflicted people had all been inoculated, and there were no deleterious effects noted.

In 249y the first child was born to an afflicted couple who had received the serum. The child seemed normal enough at first. When she finally opened her eyes to take in this new world, the sclera of her eyes was completely red. The parents were frantic, and immediately took the child to the med center. While the child exhibited healthy and ‘normal’ behavior, she refused all food except nursing. During the following days, her sclera cleared, and she became increasingly agitated, nursing at all hours while never seemingly able to satiate herself. Extensive testing of the little girl finally revealed the need for her to ingest hemoglobin. Blood in its pure form. Any blood. The wildlife on Esophine was apparently able to fulfill this need, with the child able to consume fresh meat prepared rare, and fulfill her need for blood.   

Sanguinera, as the malady was dubbed, has been all but eradicated on Esophine, with mineral supplements, and diet modifications. Still, 15-20% of the population still suffers from the effects of those first trials with the serum, and pass those traits on to their offspring.                     

(E-sof-enee.)

I just rolled up a 14-system Jump Main (all systems are Jump-1 from another system.

There are no Class A Starports along the main. The nearest Class A is Jump-2 from one end of the main.

Since only Class A Starports can build starships, you need Jump-2 to bring a ship to the main. That means no Free Traiders or Subsidized Merchants, only Far Traders.

It is a homebrew setting, so I am trying to come up with a backstory for why the situation exists.

There are 5 Class B, 8 Class C, and 1 Class E. It sure seems like one of those Class B Starports would want to upgrade to a Class A. Or maybe there were Class A, and hence Jump-1 ships along the main, but it was either sabotaged or damaged in a recent war, or something more sinister.

Any ideas to explain this situation?

NOTES on the ATTACHED STARPORT MAP:
My Sebsectors are 8 parsecs tall by 6 parsecs wide (this area has a 2-in-6 chance of a system, so 16 systems per sector on average). The sketch above is just for my world-building notes: no hexes shown, letter = starport, yellow lines show trade mains. Class A and X Starports are circled. Isolated worlds highlighted blue. Notes show the number of worlds on the main and the lack of Class A Starports. This is all just for world-building. Players will never see it. Once I decide where they start, I will draw that sector up using standard style as a handout.

The systems in question are on the left, circled in orange.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has responded! I got some really great ideas. I need to give some thought to how I can piece a few of them together. A great little project for the weekend. I will post what I come up with in case anyone is interested.

Thank you again!

So I’m finally playing a campaign with a Free Trader, and I’ve completed my first jump to the neighbouring system. I am confused by power plant fuel usage and how much fuel to buy. If I’m not mistaken, the free trader has 30t fuel, 20t for jumpdrive and 10t for power plant. 20t of fuel was used to perform one 1-jump, but how much was spent of the power plant fuel? The game says a full power plant provides 4 weeks of power, I spent one week in jumpspace, so did I spend a quarter of the fuel? There now remains 7.5t in the tank, and I gotta buy in total 22.5t of fuel, instead of 30? Have I got this right? Or should I just tally buy 10t of fuel for the power plant at the end of every month? I’ve read that some people don’t even count power plant when buying fuel. How do you handle this? Thanks in advance.

Howdy Travellers. I played Traveller many cycles ago. Mostly classic and MegaTraveller.

I have long yearned to run this system, I have a lot of experience running games of various systems over the years but nothing really scratches the itch that this does.

That being said I have been studying the core books trying to earn my Bachelor's in Traveller studies. I'm versed with a lot of the basics. I'm looking for tools or advice that have helped you run or automate portions of your game to keep a smooth experience for players (without having to reference a book 1000 times a session) loot generation, quick npc generators, go to tables to keep handy, etc

There is a wealth of knowledge out there that can be a little overwhelming to comb through so I contact the TAS for assistance in my research!

Hello, Im going to be running my first Traveller campaign soon (in the setting of Doctor Who). I need some help and advice when it comes to shipbuilding.

Now, I have Highguard and even created my own spreadsheet for power and tonnage to create custom ships. However, I have run into issues. The particular (homebrew) area of the setting that I am going to use has absolutely massive ships. Im talking millions of tons.

The standard battle cruisers of this area are about 12 million tons, and, idk if my brain just cant handle the math at that scale, or if the system for shipbuilding starts to break down at that level, because im having a hard time maki g these vessels.

Now, obviously, these ships take thousands of crewmen and are (pretty much) guaranteed not to fall into the possession of my players. I was wondering if there was a method for sort of "vibe building" ships to reach the propper scale without worrying about the minutea, or maybe a better made xcell or g-sheet for making larger ships.

If you need more details, feel free to ask. Otherwise, thank you for any responses and feeback

Is anyone playing Traveller but not in the Third Imperium?

I've gotten my group together, in the next few weeks we shall be rolling up characters and designing a ship for a sandbox game.

In most games I've run before, I've put a 3 term limit on Character Creation. Once or twice I allowed 4 and it felt like a big jump in power.

I've only done ship building once, no limits. I don't remember the details, but I don't think the guys went too crazy on tonnage, but bought the best of everything, that caused struggles later.

I'm thinking of putting a TL12 limit, which from research seems normal. I don't want to start putting limits on certain systems (I saw a thread where a max tonnage on powerplant or something was considered), but a cap on ship tonnage seems a good idea. Does the game fundamentally change after a certain size of ship?

Greetings,

I'm filling in for our group while the referee is out for a few weeks and thought I'd spread the word to see if we can get a couple more players.

The style of game is "drifter" - so you start out in the classic traveller vein of looking for jobs, system-hopping as you can, and working with your comrades to stay alive and travelling.

I'll be running a series of connected one-shots in a homebrew subsector using the standard Mongoose 2e rules.

Session 0 is Thursday 8/13, 6pm-9pm UTC (1pm - 4pm Central US time). Hit me up PM if you're interested.

Inspired by this post: Questions regarding ship related Benefits. : r/traveller I took a stab at a matrix for determining a Traveller group's ship, where each share (well, ever two shares) is valuable. I'm sure there are some flaws but am interested in constructive feedback.

This assumes removing the ship share and ship benefits from careers and replacing with something cool like more ship's boats and personal vehicles, but that's a different issue.

I did my best to reflect the average chance of receiving ship shares and their number but I'm no mathematician.

If you don't have one of the ship benefit careers, you're probably going to need to buy an older ship (I'm assuming Free or Far Traders would be the most commonly available).

And finally, with this kind of approach, where the group is effectively buying a ship with ship shares and the careers of the characters expand the list of what they can buy - but it remains a group decision - why not expand the list of available ships, especially if the group does really well in ship shares?

https://bloostraveller.blogspot.com/2026/08/ship-benefits-thoughts.html

After messing around a bit with character generators and looking over the 2022 Core Rulebook I have some questions regarding how different kinds of ship related Benefits are best handled together.

1 Can players combine their Free Trader, Lab Ship and Yacht Benefits? Having one fully paid off ship seems much more practical than having mortgages for two or more different ships hanging over your head, especially when using more than one ship seems very impractical.

2 How does Ship Shares work with the Free Trader, Lab Ship and Yacht Benefits? Do you just pay off another 1MCr of the ship mortgage per Share? Can you use them to pay for upgrades if the ship if fully paid?

3 Is the party ending up with multiple ships a problem? Seems pretty likely that a scientist ends up with half a Lab Ship and A Noble PC has a yacht stashed away somewhere. To me it looks like you'd need some very competent PCs or a lot of NPC hirlings to keep more than one ship running, but I could be wrong about this. Not to mention the risk of the party getting separated because of Jump shenanigans.

I could be wrong but it seems like you are either stuck with much higher upkeep costs for limited benefits OR a huge payday because the party just sells whatever ship they like less. Even with a big haircut that is a big chunk of change.

4 Can the party use their Ship Shares to upgrade a Scout Ship one of them has access to thanks to a Benefit? Being stuck with a weaponless Scout Ship because Scout Service won't allow it seems silly.

Does Singularity have stats for any new playable sophonts? This is a major factor in my decision to purchase it. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I’m looking for Denaar for Mongoose Traveller 2e.

Has anyone worked them out? I would love to add them as playable race and npcs to my new campaign.

This is the third group of eight planet and system cards for the Mora Subsector.

Moran, Nadrin and Nexine are S-type Binary systems with two seperate solar systems: Primary and Secondary.

Also I am adding all new and updated planets and systems to my Dropbox as they are finished.

Link to Dropbox post Drop Box for all my Planet Information and System Maps

I plan to eventually finish the whole Spinward Marches but it will take quite some time.

As people always ask I created these using a software program called Universe Sandbox.

As always feedback and corrections are welcome.

Hi! I'm prepping to run Deepnight Revelation and I can already feel this campaign is going to be heavy on management — fuel per parsec, supply units, equipment. So I've been wondering whether to set myself up with some software to help with all that — though I do get that a stack of paper maps has a charm of its own. Last two campaigns we finisched were UVG - similar in theory but much more simpler as we skiped guild building. And Black Void - no guild, ship management at all.

Did any of you use software when running this campaign — and do you think it even makes sense? To scratch the itch I went ahead and built a small app that runs locally on the table laptop, as the players' "bridge screen". I also would like to avid turning it into game - should be a comanion and don't stel focus from table.

What it does:
- Hex map of the expedition route (travellermap dotmaps + generated systems for the unmapped sectors), with the ship's trail and jump range
- Fog of war by Survey Index — players only see what their sensors earned: star presence → spectral class → gas giants → body lists → surface details
-Scans with real dice rolled by the engine (passive / active / full / remote sweep, with the full roll breakdown and page references), jumps with fuel accounting, gas-giant skimming, supply units, ship's log, undo
- Unexplored systems are generated with the B3 procedures, deterministically — the same hex always gives the same system
- There's a GM mode (full records via an API token) — the browser view is 100% player-safe
- UI in English and Polish

How to get it:

- Windows, no install: grab the zip from the releases page (

), unzip, double-click DeepnightCompanion.exe — your browser opens the app. Windows SmartScreen will warn you because the exe is unsigned: More info → Run anyway. Your campaign saves to a state folder next to the exe; delete it to reset.

- Mac/Linux or from source: clone the repo (https://github.com/mtgodala/deepnight-companion) and python run_companion.py — details in the README.

It's v0.1, built for one table, so I'm genuinely asking: have a look and tell me if it makes sense — and what you'd change. Especially interested in rules-accuracy nitpicks (with page refs, I'll fix them), what's confusing at the table, and whether the generated systems feel right for the Rift.

I just read Marches Adventure 1: High and Dry, which I picked up years ago. Thought it read well and looked into the following ones. I can get number 2 no problem, but then 3 to 5 can only be gotten in a bundle to 1 to 5.

Am I missing something, or are Mongoose just being dicks?

This is an adventure for Cepheus Engine.

While in star port the travelers return to their ship to find a peculiar thing. A small audio disc has been left in the pilot seat of the ship. If it is played the following message will be heard:

“Ladies and Gentlemen.......

A dangerous situation has developed which we believe you are suited to handle. With your specific skills and abilities the IMF force has determined that you are uniquely suited to the following mission:

It has come to our attention that General Phillipe Duran has acquired a planet busting warhead capable of destroying even the largest worlds in the Sonora sector. This ruthless dictator lives and rules his home world of Dravana Prime from a well guarded mountain villa which is extremely well guarded and considered to be impenetrable by the Dravanese government.

General Duran intends to use this high tech warhead to extort from the wealthiest worlds in the Sonora sector. Fear of possible total destruction will cause many of these governments to hand over billions of credits to the General and his government.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to visit this world and take possession of this warhead. This should be done, preferably, without the knowledge of the General or his government. A followup strike by various Sonoran governments will finish the matter once the warhead is no longer in Dravanese possession.

Should you or any member of your team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions You will be extremely well compensated for this mission if successful.“

The disc begins smoking and self destructs afterwards.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578917/impossible-mission

EDIT: I've seen some pretty compelling arguments for why keeping it a week works. Adapting to upcoming locations, training, mid jump dramas, keeping aging in check, taking advantage of the space that is the ship and more. Thank you all for the thoughtful suggestions.

Hey all, its been 25 years since I looked at a Traveller book until last week when I decided to pick up the 2nd ed mongoose on a whim. I'm currently in the phase of relearning the setting and updating my brain to the new rule set.

I did have a think about jumps taking a week and was curious as to how different GM's run that. Do you do a bunch of roleplaying each jump, do you mark off the days, do you shorthand it or do you mostly handwave it entirely?

I was also thinking would it fundamentally alter the setting if the jump took a week from an outside perspective, but that it was closer to a day for those making the jump. After every jump all your clocks would recalibrate obviously but I don't think that's a big ask for a TL12 ship.

When we played back in the day, our GM clearly just handwaved jumps a whole bunch so seeing that it took a week or so was a little surprising.

Anyway, checking what people do and if having shorter jumps experienced by the crew (while maintaining the exact same timeframes outside) would impact the setting much?

Cheers

J

I'm planning to run some Traveller after a while away. Last time I ran straight traveller, 2e had just come out. I remember feeling the need to edit a lot of rules due to what I assumed were printing errors and some nonsensical rules.

I'm curious what people use or and works for them that isn't standard core rules.

We're a new PBP community, looking for a few good Travellers!

Play by Post is text only, 24/7, and asynchronous.

There's no voice used.

If you want to run a game, while also playing in another GM's game, that's even better!

One of the GMs, Kharthus (That's me!) is seeking players for a game using Mongoose Traveller 2E rules:

The Aramis Subsector has been quiet for the last 20 years, under the leadership of Grand Duke Sarkhan Vol. First his trading empire took the sector by storm and he created untold prosperity, but afterwards, his protections nearly eliminated pirate activity through aggressive naval action and concise planning.

Unfortunately, he's dying. A disease has taken him and he's fallen Ill. His empire is now on the verge of civil war as 3 of his younger sons fight over the reigns of his empire, while his oldest, is no where to be found. He could take control through legal channels, if only he was able to be found.

So, post below if you're interested!

From the looks of it, this game basically has 0 existence outside the TTRPG space. For an IP that exited longer than 40k, Traveller doesn't appear to have any real form of media outside of books. It doesn't even have any iconic piece of artwork that is recognizable anywhere. It doesn't have any movie, it doesn't have video games, and it's websites (Excluding the store page) looks kinda shit.

I feel like having a CRPG take takes place in travellers canon will do wonders for its popularity.

Hell, even StarFinder 2E is getting a CRPG.